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nk497 writes "Microsoft's failure to include the EU browser ballot in Windows 7 SP1 cost Mozilla as many as 9 million Firefox downloads, the organisation's head of business affairs revealed. Harvey Anderson said daily downloads of Firefox fell by 63% to a low of 20,000 before the ballot was reinstated, and after the fix, downloads jumped by 150% to 50,000 a day. Over the 18 months the ballot was missing, that adds up to six to nine million downloads — although it's tough to tell if the difference has more to do with Chrome's success or the lack of advertising on Windows systems.

The EU is currently investigating the "glitch", and Microsoft faces a massive fine for failing to include the screen, which offers download details for different browsers to European Windows users, as part of measures ordered by the EU to balance IE's dominance."Link to Original Source

If people are knowledgeable/care enough to choose a non IE browser, wouldn't they know how to get Firefox for themselves?
The graph shows an initial peak (when the ballot is introduced?), followed by a decline (and even a big drop in the start of 2011, before the ballot box debacle). Most of the decline in 2011 was quite steady. If they really claim the ballot box was the driving factor, shouldn't there be more of a discontinuity?
(I personally use FF and think the ballot is a good thing - I don't have to